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A journey towards a marathon before 30

Tag Archives: 5K race

This post is a little update to tell you that I am winding down this blog. But I have a new place for my writing www.damienclarkson.com, where I will be writing more broadly about my life, politics, cycling, environment and yes still running, veganism and health and fitness, please come over and say hi.

Just to bring you up to speed. Over the past few months, I have been rehabbing my muscle tightness after the Edinburgh Marathon and embarking on physio. I am making progress but still definitely at a point where I have a lot of tension in my legs. As a result I am running less, around 10 miles a week and mixing it up with cycling, swimming and a bespoke circuits style class with my friend Kate in London Fields called, Pump, Sweat and Burn.

This blog has been a massive source of inspiration and support for me. Without it I don’t think I would be where I am now, which is basically the fittest, slimmest and healthiest I have been in a decade. You comments literally hundreds of them got me through so many tough moments. And I just want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart. You’re kind people putting love into the world and that is a powerful thing.

I have long been involved in the environmental movement and to combine these two things I love is really exciting for me. We’re meeting at Parliament Square in Westminster at 7:45pm. This is the event, please come and join me and The Future to call for urgent action on climate change and sweat a little bit.

Well I didn’t finish in the top 10 but I thoroughly enjoyed my first Hackney Marshes Parkrun this morning. I went along with my friend Kasia and for some reason I was a bag of nerves. So much so that I got a stitch during the 30 minute walk to the park, not ideal to say the least. But once at the run my nerves evaporated the volunteers were super friendly and I bumped into an old colleague Adele who was also running her first Parkrun.

Again I didn’t have a watch to monitor my pace but used RunKeeper without headphones, so throughout I didn’t have an idea how fast I was running. I knew that I was pushing myself so I guessed my time would be reasonable. I started off really strongly in the lead group and settled down into a nice consistent pace.

But today I just seemed to have one gear, throughout the race about 6 people went past me they obviously nailed the negative splits. Which is something I definitely need to work on. I suppose I am just afraid I will not be able to accelerate when the time comes. Does anyone else worry about this? And if so what is the secret to overcoming it? Racing is a new experience to me and I am definitely running with the fear of burning out at the moment. With how far to go should I be sprinting to the finish? 500 metres?